2020 Highlights

It’s been a very, very, very long time since I wrote anything on here, so I thought that now is a good time – finally – about time!

Emerging from my lockdown bolthole – ©Rebecca Reynolds Photography 2020

While many people were home for all the lockdowns and restrictions throughout 2020, I was actually away from home, working as a carer. I was staying with a couple, helping an 83 year old lady to care for and look after her husband who had come home from hospital after a 2 month struggle with double pneumonia and progression of Lewy body dementia. The prognosis was very poor indeed and, as covid 19 was beginning to strike hard right across the UK at that time, I felt that it would be just plain wrong to commute between their house and mine and potentially bring the virus into their home. My husband agreed and so I moved in with them in early April. The gentleman I was caring for rallied and we had a wonderful time together until he eventually passed away at the beginning of December.

Lewy body dementia is quite different to other dementias. My new friend had been first diagnosed with it only 4 years earlier, having noticed a deterioration in mobility and the onset of some pretty severe hallucinations and paranoias. His memory was largely unaffected, but his sensory awareness declined. His eyesight deteriorated, his hearing was affected and his skin became very sensitive. Spatial awareness was a big problem, making it very difficult for him to judge distance and position of things such as his bowl or his spoon. He was unable to swallow properly too, which became a challenge for us to come up with tasty and tempting soft meals, as well as making sure that he didn’t load up his mouth between swallowing – he had a tendency to pocket food in his mouth pouches like a hamster! The main problems for him, however, were the difficulties in establishing what was real and what was not. His dreams were so vivid that they seemed real and he would also see things or hear things that were not there, but were so real to him.

Knowing the difficulties and likely progression of a condition like Lewy body dementia made it so much easier to care for my new friend, as we worked both with and around the issues. He wanted us to always be truthful with him, as it was the only hook that he had to determine reality from hallucination and, because we were honest with him, he believed us, trusted us and allowed us to help him when he needed us to…even if he didn’t think he needed help at the time.

The best days were full of laughter, literature, poetry and lively debates. In his former years, my new friend had been a linguist, fluent in Russian, French, German and Spanish. He was so interested to know that I was trying to learn Welsh and we would struggle together with it – though he managed so much better than me! We learned a new Welsh word each day, and every morning when I went in to his room we would greet each other with ‘bore da’. Each night would end with a quiet ‘nos da’ and ‘cysgu’n dda.’

My friend was a master of English Literature and I read aloud to him from Shakespeare – we managed The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the Sonnets, in those 9 months before he died. I read his favourite poetry aloud to him – Dylan Thomas ‘Fernhill’, Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘The Windhover’, and John Betjeman’s ‘Upper Lambourne’ being particular favourites. I read to him from Dickens, from Leigh Hunt and from Francis Kilvert. Although his eyesight had gone, his memory had not and he would very often quote the well-known lines as I read them alongside him. Despite his long career as a schoolmaster and headmaster, he never once corrected me – even my risible attempts at French dialogue in Henry V – and he always patiently explained when I asked what certain passages meant or why a poem would be written in a particular style.

The best memories that I have though, are when we used to sit in the garden – under the apple boughs, drinking in the air, the soft susurration of leaves whispering in the breeze and the hum of the bees as they worked from branch to branch above our heads. Our aim had always been to keep his last days, weeks and months as calm and peaceable as possible. To not deny what was happening, but to live with it and work around it in as gentle and easy a way as we could. I shall remain friends forever with his wife and we will never forget our lockdown together in 2020. Not always easy, but not always so bad either!

Under the apple boughs…©Rebecca Reynolds Photography 2020

Rebecca. x

In my A to Z of Birding in Britain, D is for…

Dipper.

I had a real tussle with my heartstrings trying to decide whether ‘D’ would be for dipper, or for Dartford warbler. Both qualify for the accolade of my favourite bird, so how to decide? Toss a coin…

…so, ‘D’ is for dipper.

dipper-cheedale

Don’t let that stop you finding out more about the Dartford warbler though. If you haven’t seen one at all and you’re able to get out and about, have a look on any of our southern heaths: RSPB Arne in Dorset is well worth a look, as is Dunwich Heath in Suffolk, and Yateley Common on the Hampshire/Surrey/Berkshire border is a great place to see them too.

Residents in England’s south eastern counties have to go a bit further afield to see dipper though, as they favour fast-flowing rocky-bottomed rivers, of the sort which are mainly found in the upland areas of Britain and some parts of southwest England.

Also known affectionately as ‘Water Ousel’, a dipper is truly amazing. With a bob rate of up to 60 dips per minute, it isn’t hard to see how it got the name, but what makes the dipper so very special?

Crowned ‘National Bird of Norway’ in 2000, the dipper (Cinclus cinclus) is a marvel of biological design and engineering. Able to walk on the river bed to forage for small fish and invertebrates, a dipper can stay underwater for around 30 seconds at a time. It doesn’t have webbed feet, but it does have some remarkable physiological adaptations to help it master its environment.

As it walks along the riverbed, the dipper counteracts the force of the river currents by stretching out its wings, pushing itself forward and remaining submerged. Having non-webbed feet really helps here, allowing for extra grip on the river floor, and they have an extra eye membrane that protects their eyes but still enables them to see while underwater.

Dipper routinely store oxygen in their muscles, so that it’s available to them when they dive and have to stop breathing, and because they need it to help provide greater muscular control to balance against the force of the current.

Specialised flaps close the nostrils and the bird dives in. Receptors in the blood vessels detect increased levels of carbon dioxide as the dipper stops breathing, this then triggers a response from the brain to slow the heart rate and cause different blood vessels to constrict or dilate as necessary:

Peripheral blood vessels constrict, reducing heat loss, and blood supply to the digestive system also temporarily shuts down, thus conserving and redistributing energy.

Blood vessels around the heart and the brain dilate, allowing the extra oxygen that has been set aside to be made available to co-ordinate feeding, walking and functioning underwater.

Admittedly dipper aren’t alone in this, many birds do the same, or similar, to manage hypoxic (low oxygen) environments – think of high altitude migration; sea birds; dabbling ducks and divers. But dipper are the only birds I can think of that actually walk along the river bed to feed, which really is quite incredible. And that’s why I’m glad that ‘D’ was for Dipper.

What’s in a Name?

Shakespeare‘s Juliet pondered this same question, concluding ‘that which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.‘ Undeniably true, it perfectly illustrates the point that we should never be defined solely by the words that are attached to us as labels.

Whitethroat, image copyright (c) Rebecca Reynolds 2017

Our names are obviously important though: they declare us as individuals, or even as part of a group, giving us presence, identity and awareness of others.

I declare my name as an individual at the top of the blog, but I’m also happy to be labelled as a birdwatcher. I feel that it helps to define me, my ideals and what’s important to me. Call me a twitcher though and I’d say that you were wrong!

But why be so fussy about it? After all, going back to Shakespeare: ‘Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title‘…or, in other words, what’s in a name? Doesn’t it mean that really, even if I were called a twitcher, birdwatching should retain for me that sense of perfection experienced in the quiet contemplation of the delightfully diverse natural world around me. Well, no. It doesn’t. Twitching is often frenetic, competitive, even stressful – it’s a world away from the quiet joy of birdwatching! So, to answer the earlier question, what’s in a name?, sometimes it’s everything!

Names of birds are also really useful when it comes to identifying them. I remember a conversation with a policeman a while ago now. He wondered what my sister-in-law and I were up to, as we were wandering about close to the perimeter fence of AWRE Aldermaston. We told him, truthfully, that we were trying to spot a lesser whitethroat…what’s that then?, he asked. He laughed when we replied that it is a small bird with a white throat, slightly smaller than the whitethroat which also has, you guessed it, a white throat!

Things aren’t always quite so straightforward though, when learning the common names of birds. A male grey wagtail does indeed wag his tail, but he looks far more yellow and blue-grey than the plain grey his name would suggest. A white wagtail looks very much like a pied wagtail, black and white, not at all like the all-white feathers you might expect from its name!

So, while labels and names can be misleading, and should always be used with caution and a respect for individuality, sometimes they are really important and that should also be respected. The key is to know and understand which are welcomed and which are not.

Rebecca, x

In my A to Z of Birding in Britain, C is for…

Chough. Watching these birds skip along on the wind, chattering to each other as they go, is an absolute joy. I could never be bored or tired of watching them!

Chough on Skomer; image copyright (C) Rebecca Reynolds 2017

Restricted to the western coasts and nearby inland areas of mainland Britain, chough can be easily distinguished from their corvid counterparts by a bright red downward-curved bill and red legs. Myself and my husband spent a gloriously sunny day on Skomer, (an island off the Pembrokeshire coast), a couple of years ago now in early June. We watched as the chough skipped around, digging and foraging in the short grass, and smiled as we saw them ‘breeze-surfing’ along the windswept cliff edges.

The Isle of Man is a stronghold for chough in Britain, as are sites along the west coasts of Wales. We’ve seen them at RSPB South Stack, in Anglesey, and I saw them at Dumfries in Scotland many years ago. More recently, we’ve watched them inland in Snowdonia, flying and foraging around Craig y Aderyn (Bird Rock).

The chough is an amber-listed bird in the UK, where the numbers of breeding birds are falling, and is at risk of further decline if conservation efforts are not started now.

Once common, the chough used to be known as Cornish chough, or, more prosaically in 17th century Wales and Scotland as the Crow of Cornwall. The Cornish chough is happily making a comeback from local extinction as (according to RSPB data) nearly 100 chicks have successfully fledged from Cornish nests since 2002. Previous to that, the last successful nest in Cornwall was way back in 1947. Good news for the chough, and good news for Cornwall’s coat of arms, which depicts a chough sat proudly at the top, flanked by a fisherman and a tin miner!

In heraldry, choughs are known as beckits. Featured on Canterbury’s coat of arms, the beckits are a reference to the story of the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Legend has it that crows entered the cathedral, where the murdered archbishop lay in his blood, and started to peck at his body, thus turning their beaks and legs bright blood red.

A similarly grisly tale has linked chough with the violent death of King Arthur, where his soul departed his body in the form of a chough – its red bill and legs signifying his sticky demise. Personally, I see chough as highly sociable and the most playful of all the corvids. I certainly don’t see anything ghoulish or ghastly in their behaviour. Invertebrates would disagree if they could though, and I know we shouldn’t confer human sensibility on animals – but I do see chough as really rather playful and jolly birds!

I do, of course, realise that life isn’t so easy for chough. It is a struggle for them to maintain population sizes in the UK, as land management changes and cliffs erode. Preferring to dig in places where pasture is less than 5cm high and soil is soft enough to probe with their bill severely restricts the chough’s range. In winter, when the ground is frozen, chough will often venture down to the beach and pick about the seaweed, or on carcasses where maggots and other invertebrates can be found. Stubble fields are also an important food source as they may have spilled grains of oats or barley to supplement the diet.

Living for roughly 10 years, chough are monogamous, pair-bonding for several years and returning each year to the same nest site. Where sheep, cattle or ponies used to keep vegetation short and open, moving livestock inland has caused many cliff-edge pastures to become covered by scrub vegetation. Most of the successful breeding and feeding sites are currently on conservation-group-owned and managed land, but many coastal farmers and landowners are following the advice for good conservation practice and the UK chough population is, hopefully, slowly increasing again.

The RSPB website has a lot of interesting facts and figures about chough if you’d like to find out more, but do get out to see them if you can. Nothing can beat the first sight of these lovely birds riding the winds of a rocky clifftop, or digging about for a meal with that glorious red bill.

There are several other birds that could fall into the category of C is for…and everybody will have their favourites, but for me, C is definitely for chough!

Rebecca, x

Finchampstead – Inspired by Nature?

We know many villages and towns across the UK were named because of their links to a family, a landscape feature or natural abundance of particular wildlife species, so I decided to take a look at one: the village of Finchampstead, on the Surrey/Hampshire borders of Berkshire.

There may be some discussion about it, but however Finchampstead took its name, it still resounds with the characterful songs of the small, seed-eating, splendidly colourful bird family Fringillidae.

Finchampstead chaffinch image copyright Rebecca Reynolds (c) 2018

Goldfinch, chaffinch, bullfinch, greenfinch, redpoll and linnet can all still be seen in the area, and some may be easily tempted into Finchampstead gardens with fresh water in a shallow dish or pool and seed mixes put out in clean feeders.

Unfortunately rare in Finchampstead now, though formerly common on The Ridges, are hawfinch and crossbill. Both present today in the New Forest, and crossbill resident in nearby heath forests, it’s not inconceivable that they were both once a common sight in Finchampstead; to see them there again would be wonderful.

Finchampstead and the surrounding Bracknell Forest areas were once part of the extensive Windsor Forest royal hunting grounds. Alexander Pope referenced many of the birds found here in his work of 1736, Windsor Forest, but he didn’t mention any finches – they were all game birds (partridge, pheasant, doves, woodcocks, plovers, larks), sadly only seen when ‘…chearful horns are blown, and arms employed on birds and beasts alone.’

Agriculture and building development changed the landscape irrevocably, but one man mourned the loss of game birds and re-introduced black grouse onto a nearby Surrey heath in 1815. According to naturalist William Yarrell in 1843, ‘some of the descendants of these birds…extended themselves as far as Finchampstead in Berkshire.‘ How marvellous if they could still be found there now!

Our local British wildlife is rich, varied and, unfortunately in some cases, increasingly rare. The black grouse and resident hawfinch have disappeared from Finchampstead, but we can still celebrate the natural diversity that we do have, wherever we live.

Artists, photographers, fashion designers and musicians all continue to be inspired by nature. Conservation groups and local people are passionate about protecting their local wildlife patches, and with good reason: local health walks aren’t just good for the body, they’re great for easing the mind too!

Rebecca, x

What Happened to Our Garden Birds?

August is often a quiet month for birdwatchers, as many people wonder ‘where did all the birds go?’

Female and juvenile great-spotted woodpecker image copyright (c) Rebecca Reynolds 2019

Just a few weeks ago we were either enraptured or, dare I say it, some of you may possibly have been even a little irritated by, the dawn chorus. But now all is quiet. There may be a few contact and alarm calls from deep within the shrubbery but, apart from those little peeps and clicks, there is very little to show for our dedication to filling up the feeders.

So where are they all?

The frenzied weeks of spring and early summer have passed, our birds have met and mated, raised their young and seen them fly the nest. Now is the time to recover their spent energy, build up condition and prepare for the autumn and winter months to come.

Summer plumage is lost to make way for winter feathers and August is peak moulting season. Our birds need to hide away during this time as they are particularly vulnerable to predation. Flight feathers are either in poor condition or are still coming through – shabby feathers really don’t help if a bird needs to make a quick getaway from a hungry predator!

Many of our birds migrate for the winter and will be getting ready to leave in the autumn. They need to be in tip-top condition and their muscles fuelled ready for the long flight ahead.

Once the feathers are ready, many of our resident garden birds will forego the feeders in preference to the abundance of fresh seeds and fruits available in the fields or nearby woodlands. So, don’t worry if the garden suddenly seems a bit too quiet, our birds are still here and they will be back again soon. You’ll still see a few old friends popping by the feeders or taking a splash and a drink at the bird bath – plus it’s an ideal time to clean the nest boxes, feeders and baths ready for the birds as they come back into the garden next month, all fresh and fit!

Rebecca. x

In my A to Z of Birding in Britain, B is for…

Bempton Cliffs.

RSPB Bempton Cliffs is a rather windswept but very interesting reserve perched on cliffs along the Flamborough Headland Heritage Coast.

Not for the faint-hearted, RSPB Bempton Cliffs has several viewpoints where you can peer over the edge of the cliffs and scan for kittiwake, fulmar, guillemot, razorbill and puffin, as well as marvel at those aerobatic masters – the gannets! Four of the six viewpoints are accessible for wheelchairs, with wheelchair bays and thoughtfully-positioned handrails for unobstructed views.

Rising over 330ft above the waves, the vertiginous cliffs are the perfect spot for getting up close to one of our greatest British seabird colonies. Bempton Cliffs hold 10% of the UK population of kittiwakes, and the cliffs also hold Britain’s only mainland breeding colony of gannets. Having such a great vantage point to observe gannets in flight, my husband made an interesting comparison to the aeronautic manoeuvrability of fighter aircraft, saying “they must have been looking at a gannet when they designed the F-15!”

After watching the gannets diving, turning and making such precise alterations to flight when coming in to land, we wondered if the engineers responsible for fast jet aircraft design were also birdwatchers, inspired by the masterful aerial displays of gannets along the coasts.

Avian evolution has surely answered all the technical challenges of aerodynamic stability – lift, drag, yaw, whatever else is required to manoeuvre an aircraft at high speed – so I’m convinced that aircraft designers must be birdwatchers too!

RSPB Bempton Cliffs also has a large meadow area backing away from the cliffs, and here you might find butterflies and day-flying moths, and wild flowers, such as the common-spotted, northern marsh and pyramidal orchids. Benches provide ideal picnic spots where you can still see the gannets as they fly up and down along the cliff edge.

Hedgerows alongside the visitor centre provide welcome shelter for small birds, and an excellent spot to look for tree sparrow while sampling the delicious locally-made ice cream! Farmland birds such as skylark, corn bunting and linnet are commonly seen here and, in winter, short-eared owls can be seen quartering the meadows.

Bempton Cliffs is also a great location for migrating birds to stop off on their way in or out of the country. Red-backed shrike, barred and icterine warblers are reported almost annually, as well as redstart, wheatear, fieldfare, redwing and ring ouzel. Peregrine and shag are here and, if you’re lucky, you may spot porpoise in the water from the cliff-top viewing platforms.

All-in-all, RSPB Bempton Cliffs is well worth a visit if you’re in or near the East Riding of Yorkshire – but make sure you take a head for heights…and maybe postpone your visit if you’ve just splashed out on an expensive coiffure!

In my A to Z of Birding in Britain, A is for…

Aberlady Bay. Why? Because whatever time of year you go, you will always see, hear, or sense something special.

Berwick Law, remnant of Scotland’s volcanic past, stands looking across the bay from the east; the Forth bridges and Edinburgh Castle can be seen to the west, while a swirling mass of gannets create a hazy, white, pulsating throng over Bass Rock to the north.

At low tide, the soft sands of the bay are peppered with the exposed remains of wrecked midget submarines and the partially submerged spars of sunken ships. There are remains of a medieval harbour wall just around the small headland at Kilspindie, and hundreds of fossils underfoot just to the west of the old harbour entrance.

The Peffer Burn flows into the estuary at the eastern end of a beautiful pink thrift-covered salt marsh, emptying into the wide sandy bay beneath a wooden footbridge: immortalised by the Scottish author Nigel Tranter, as the Bridge to Enchantment.

As you walk across the bridge, look out for curlew, godwits, sandpipers, dunlin, oystercatcher, ringed plover, shelduck, teal, lapwing, greenshank, wigeon and pochard. Sedge warbler, reed warbler and reed bunting are in the summer reeds lining the burn and, in the autumn, the bay plays host to tens of thousands of pink-footed geese.

Once across the bridge, you can also see seals on the sands, plus toads, roe deer, barn owl and winter fieldfare across the meadows. Marl Loch has coot, moorhen, water rail and mute swan. The dune slacks hold many wild flowers, grasses and sedges, including the rare grass of Parnassus. Butterflies are attracted to swathes of viper’s bugloss, and this extraordinarily varied habitat attracts all manner of moths by night – as well as bats, badgers and sometimes a few bobble-hatted volunteers (of which I’ve been one on several occasions now!)

The dune slacks are also notable at Aberlady for the great chain of WW2 anti-tank blocks, which are slowly being colonised by shallow-rooted pioneer plants, mosses and lichens, as well as being a haven for myriad insects.

Rock pools and shelves are perfect spots for turnstone, sanderling, redshank, rock pipit and occasional water pipit. Snow bunting enjoy the sands and Richard’s pipit have been seen in the brush areas at the rear of the dunes. I’ve seen grasshopper warbler, goldfinch, crossbill, willow warbler, chiffchaff, pale-bellied Brent geese, little egret, kingfisher, buzzard, kestrel, skylark, wheatear, whitethroat, blackcap…bats, butterflies, moths, seals, fossils, flowers, deer and so many beautiful coloured rocks and stones!

The headland at Gullane Point is an ideal spot for a picnic while setting up the scopes for long-tailed duck, pintail, divers, sawbills, scoter, puffin, razorbill, guillemot, eider, gulls, terns and gannets…as well as anything else that may be overflying or stopping up to rest for a while!

Whatever time of year you go, you’ll see something special. If you do go, why not volunteer to help with a bird survey, or moth trapping, maybe a botanical survey, or a beach clean? The reserve is managed by the East Lothian Countryside Ranger Service and they will always be happy for some help, even if just for one day!

Amblings and Ramblings

For a very long time now, I’ve enjoyed a real good ramble out in the British countryside. I love it. But even more so now as I now amble along with my camera and a notebook, jotting down new discoveries and taking my time to really see what’s around.

I really hope that you will join me here and enjoy my rural escapes and adventures as I wander the pathways and passages of our beautiful British Isles.

Rebecca. x